Rethinking the Crisis of Citizenship: Theories of Liberal Nationalism and Constituonal Patriotism

Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, there has been a widespread belief that citizenship as a concept and practice is in crisis, causing a revival of citizenship studies. The crisis of citizenship results from the disappearance of the citizen as a political subject who has the capacity to create and transform the world with words and deeds. This crisis provides a challenge to rearticulate the relationship between democracy, rights, sovereignty and national identity as the primary components of modern citizenship. There have been two responses to this challenge: liberal nationalism and constitutional patriotism. Both approaches try to answer the question of how to promote a democratic political community of free and equal citizens in modern societies under the condition of cultural diversity by focusing on the citizenship debate. The aim of this paper is to reveal the main arguments of these two accounts on citizenship and politics and to argue that constitutional patriotism presents a more plausible alternative in overcoming the crisis of citizenship.